Citizenship Foundation: educating for effective citizenship

Identifying citizenship education as ‘the single biggest government investment in youth citizenship’, the Youth Citizenship Commission’s (YCC) final report’s first recommendation to Government calls on the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families to ensure that ‘the delivery of citizenship education is consistent and effective’.

The Citizenship Foundation agrees with the YCC's assessment that young people's experience of citizenship education is mixed and welcomes the emphasis the Commission has put on reinvigorating citizenship's delivery. As the Commission's report suggests, the Department of Children, Schools and Families needs to develop delivery plans to promote teacher training and good teaching practice for citizenship. We continue to call on the DCSF to take a more proactive approach to promoting the value of citizenship education.

In the Commission's recommendations around citizenship education, we were also pleased to see the recommendation that citizenship become statutory in the primary curriculum, a measure we have long argued for and that has previously been supported by the Goldsmith Review.

Beyond citizenship education in schools, the report places much emphasis on increased opportunities for young people to be involved with school governing boards and national, regional and local public bodies and increased opportunities for volunteering. The Commission also acknowledges that young people are communicating in new and different ways and calls on the Government to establish a New Media Taskforce to set out good practice for engaging with young people online.

The final report of the Commission and its other publications can be downloaded from the YCC's website.